South America was cut off from Eurasia for some 15,000 years and is generally ignored by North Americans and Europeans in any manner but superficial tourism. Yet the separate development of such features of civilization as agriculture, monumental architecture, conquest states and elite art allow us to test our own, Eurasian centric views, of what is a civilization and how do they arise.

Metal working in South America has at least two independent foci: the Altiplano of Peru/Bolivia and the closely related coastal technologies, with an emphasis upon hammered and joined sheet metal ornaments and the very different, casting oriented, traditions of the northern Andes. These latter features gold and gold alloys whereas the Peruvian traditions also used different kinds of bronze.

Presidential debates are now a fixture in the landscape of fall campaigns for the presidency. They attract worldwide media attention, as well as the interest of tens of millions of potential voters, and are held in close proximity to Election Day. In 2020, the first general election debate was a donnybrook. In this chapter, we show that citizens develop clear opinions about who won the debate and who performed well; more people viewed Biden as the winner of the first debate and his performance ratings were significantly higher than Trump’s ratings, except among Republicans. We also demonstrate that people who have low tolerance for conflict develop significantly more negative views of Trump’s performance and are significantly more likely to consider Biden the winner of the debate. Furthermore, people’s level of racism and conspiratorial thinking shape views of Trump’s and Biden’s performances during the first presidential debate. Finally, evaluations of the candidates’ performance in the debate as well as people’s views of who won the debate influence overall evaluations of Trump and Biden and produce significant changes in the ratings of Trump and Biden from September to October.

Intercontinental contact in Pre-Columbian times consisted of movement up and down the Central America corridor—to some extent. In later prehistory canoe travel along the eastern coast of Central America was extremely important, whereas the hypothesis of Mexico-South American contact via rafts on the west is a sentimental fallacy.

Because no ancient South American society had writing, all histories must be dated by archaeological mean, including radiocarbon dating. Before this was available various schemes of relative dating were proposed, most concocted on a lack of data and ethnocentric principles.

The geography of South America is extremely varied with a long range of high mountains, the Andes, along the west coast and the eastern and northern parts of the continent in various tropical forests with enormous river systems, semi-arid deserts, and the cold plains of the Pampas and Patagonia. These fostered the development of a series of extremely distinctive societies, from giant multiethnic conquest states to simple hunters and gatherers.

The northern and eastern lowlands of the South America continent are marked by extreme regional diversity of landforms coupled with the ease of communication (by canoe) over immense distances. In the Amazon proper numbers of autochthonous kingdoms have been delineated where as in the Orinoco plains and those of the Llanos de Mojos in Bolivia cultures features built up residential (islands) connected by long causeways and drain field systems prevailed.

Ceramics manufacture and use followed a very different trajectory in South American than in the rest of the world. The first ceramics in Peru were late and the earliest complex societies were completely aceramic while in the northern Andes extremely early ceramic traditions flourished and multiplied.

The incumbent president consistently and systematically sowed doubts about the integrity of the American electoral process throughout the 2020 presidential campaign. Trump’s campaign tactic had effects on voters. In this chapter, we show that public confidence in the integrity of the election is much lower for Republicans and for people paying attention to conservative news compared to Democrats and consumers of left-leaning news. Further, a propensity to believe in conspiracy theories fuels doubts about the security of the election. In addition, we show that a number of psychological predispositions consistently influence people’s assessments of Biden’s and Trump’s ability to safeguard the election, including people’s level of racial resentment and level of hostile sexism. Finally, people’s confidence in the security of the election is associated with positive changes in overall evaluations of Biden and negative changes in overall evaluations of Trump from September to October.

Beginning ca. 3800BC large circular temples with associated platforms and structures began to appear along the Peru coast, especially in the Norte Chico. Hypotheses concerning this sudden and completely preceramic development include the intensification of irrigation agriculture, a dependance upon maritime resources, and possible climatic changes.

Despite the sharp decline in the number of local newspapers, it’s important to understand that other legacy news-delivery platforms – particularly local TV news – have not been suffering the same degree of loss. Pew Research Center found that local TV news actually saw its audience increase across the evening and late-night timeslots in 2020, and that local TV companies earned more revenue than the previous year.1 In fact, local TV was deemed to be on par with or outpacing cable and network TV. Pew survey data show more Americans still prefer to get their local news from television than from any other medium, including online. Even with an increasing preference for digital delivery, “local television stations have retained a strong hold in the local news ecosystem.”2